Charlie Bones is a great folk hero of our time. He gives his listeners a reason for living on weekday mornings between 9am and 12 noon and the shows should be considered a public service. Though, these days that schedule doesn't seem carved in stone.
Anyone who knows me or has been in the same room as me in the morning for the last few years knows that I try to take Charlie Bones with me wherever I am. Ever since I first experienced Charlie on the NTS platform in the mid 20-teens I knew he could be relied upon to bring the much needed vibes to help guide me/my team through a morning in any photo studio/workspace.
A huge part of Charlie’s charm as a DJ, beyond his well practised talent as a music selector, is his ability to interact seamlessly with the audience via the station's own chat room. I’m certain that many radio stations have this facility but Charlie's willingness to show a degree of vulnerability and let his audience know how he and the other listeners are feeling, perhaps makes his show a voice for our confessional modern times.
Charlie has become such an integral part of my day that I can’t imagine life without him and I’m quite sure he gave a shape to many people's lives during the long days of 2020 and 2021. When those days seemed like they would roll on forever there was Charlie broadcasting from his living room grounding us all.
Then, in the late summer of 2021 he told the world he was leaving NTS Radio live on air. Like many, I’m certain, I was shocked. How could we have not spotted this disquiet before? Maybe there were clues? But the affable nature hid the truth and that was that. He was gone. The mornings left empty.
However, I was one of the lucky people who was in touch with Charlie outside of the online chat room enough to know that he wasn’t going to disappear completely. In October 2021 Do You World appeared on our web browser dials and thankfully Charlie is now running his own radio station on his own terms from a space in a record shop in Hackney.
Apparently the uploads of the show top the charts on Mixcloud and, though the live broadcast platform that the station uses is apparently made for podcasting, the station seems to somehow work and arrive on air. Usually on time.
The debate on the British ‘national broadcaster’ and the ethics of taking money off everybody in the country for increasingly marginal radio and TV stations seems much more interesting when there are people like Charlie and Do!!You!! World that are finding another way, through the online funding platforms and the technology required to do so.
It felt right that I shot these pictures of Charlie in his ‘studio’ at home before he moved into the new space in Well Street in Hackney. I’m lucky to have caught him in a place that had, over the course of time, changed his life fundamentally.
Shout out to Oscar, the Producer of the station, without whom the whole thing may not work so well.
Let’s hope he/they continue to Do!!You!!! for a long time to come.
Listen to the new show via this link
https://www.doyou.world
There are also hundreds of his shows available via the NTS website
Charlie Bones Broadcasting to the world from home.